Make yourself as comfortable as
possible and welcome to the SinisterCity Reading Room. This month, we review a
book from Crypto-American Press: Man-Made Monsters by Mad Marv. MAN-MADE MONSTERS Perhaps you might be curious. Maybe
you’re a chronic tequila abuser. Or, perhaps you’re just jonesing for more of a
zombie lifestyle. But if you’ve ever wondered how it would feel to wake up
dead, you’ll find a great and compelling description of the process in the
opening story of Man-Made Monsters by
Mad Marv. This soft cover anthology is
published by Crypto-American Press, which claims to have been publishing tales
of conspiracy and horror since 2005. (Wow. It seems like it was just
yesterday.) The author is a man of mystery; a sinister, hulking brute who
fancies both firearms and conspiracy theories. If you’re asking yourself
whether the “Mad” in Mad Marv is angry
mad, or nuts mad, it seems clear from
reading the book that he is mostly both. Man-Made
Monsters follows its theme nicely. The reader gets five, full-length horror
stories, each of which seeks, in its own way, to answer one of the burning
questions of the ages: What happens when
you mix monsters with conspiracies?
The results have something for everyone: zombies, mad scientists, blood
and gore, drug dealers, whores, paranoids, men in black, cabals, deadly fungus,
a beast, pandemics, plane crashes, gunfights and more. Yes, there’s more! The stories are interspersed with
Recipes for Disaster. Each Recipe for Disaster contains detailed, step by step
directions on how to make your very own monster! For those who prefer not to simply
have children, there are several different types available, from the common
vampires and zombies, to the classier golems and mandrakes. In fact, Your Honor made a small,
test golem which promptly tracked goo all
over the carpet. My bad, I put too much water in the clay. I was going to make
a mandrake, too, but the inclination faded with the realization that it was way too
much trouble to abduct someone and hang them. But you go on ahead. All of these recipes have been
tested by mad scientists and they actually work. However, none of them were certified as
safe. Mad Marv demonstrates the
inherent danger, as each Recipe for Disaster segues into a true story of
someone who actually made one. Apparently, these terrible things have a way of
turning on their creators. Go figure… The next burning issue of the ages:
Should you buy it and read it? The
SinisterCity Reading Room rates Mad Marv’s Man-Made Monsters below on five
categories: Suspension of Disbelief: Man-Made
Monsters, with its underlying drollness, doesn’t have to try very hard to
suspend the reader’s sense of disbelief. Besides, anyone who regularly visits
SinisterCity probably doesn’t even have a sense of disbelief.
TWO BONES. Plotting: The stories have beginnings, middles and ends. Yay. Some of
the plot events are a little contrived, but again, they are mostly the sort of
twists that a reader would expect with this style of writing. The viewpoint
characters are always well fleshed, even if the fringe characters can be a
little flat and stereotypical. They always are. TWO BONES. Blood, Gore, and Action: Plenty of it. There was a nice gun battle
between the heroes, the zombies and the rebels. Some really scary moments on an
airplane to doom. A shotgun powered killing spree in a medical clinic. TWO BONES. Style: Mad Marv definitely has his own style. He has a clipped, fast
paced, sequential, reporterish style of writing that sort of delivers a story,
rather than tells it. Think Ernest Hemingway on crank. Even so, there is no lack of impact and the descriptions
are clear and imaginative. It just takes a little getting used to. ONE BONES. Readability: Definitely a good read. This is a nice book to keep
bedside and read in segments, or to take camping and read around the campfire
as that aromatic blunt passes from trembling hand to trembling hand. Or, you
can snuggle into the back seat of a cross country bus and read it while you’re
passing through the With nine bones, Man-Made
Monsters by Mad Marv has gained the SinisterCity Reading Room Seal of
Approval. Your Honor, the Mayor of
SinisterCity
Back To Devil's Mailbox|
Links To
Great Sites|I Must Buy This Book Now!
